Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb believes changing the mindset of his squad has not been easy.

After racing to the National League South title last season, the Fleet have had different questions asked of them this term.

They’ve struggled after early promising results and have now gone 22 games without a clean sheet in all competitions.

A solid defence has always been part of Kutrieb’s outlook but it’s taken time to adjust after months of attacking, flowing football.

“I was speaking about it in pre-season and we worked on it then but there are a few different things,” explained Kutrieb, when talking about why his team have conceded so many goals this season.

“Sometimes it’s individual mistakes, sometimes it’s the quality from the opposition which punishes you if you make a mistake.

“Sometimes it’s switching off from set-pieces, sometimes it’s the players that are playing are not ready as they’ve been injured or they can’t play because they’ve been injured. There’s so many different things.

“Sometimes as a team you have a successful season where you don’t need to put your focus just on defending, you always could focus on how to score more goals, create more chances and what you can do to have more box entries.

“But when you focus on this for nearly one year, then it’s not easy to switch around and say ‘okay, we’ve done that last season but this season we need the complete opposite’.

“Obviously still all the praise from last year and the confidence helped us get the wins in the beginning but as soon as this turned in another direction, that’s sometimes hard work as it’s not easy to switch again.

“It’s always more comfortable to go forward, more comfortable to score goals, even do these things in training instead of working hard, defend your goal and be scrappy.

“They’re not the beautiful things and after one year as it’s not going your way you need to switch, sometimes you struggle with results, then you need to change the whole mindset.

“As everyone knows, not just in football but in life, to change your mindset is not easy.”

Kutrieb insisted that even during last season, the Fleet’s success was built on solid foundations.

“We just need to make sure we find ways not to concede too many goals as that will always be the key,” he added.

“It was the key last season. Yes, we scored over 100 goals but the key was we didn’t concede many. We conceded less than one goal per game average, and that’s outstanding regardless of how many goals you score.

“If you concede less than one goal per game you have a good chance to be up in the table and that’s what we need to focus on.

“You always think you need to score but, no, we need to make sure the ball doesn’t go in the back of our net and we’ve conceded far too many goals this season.”

Ebbsfleet can climb out of the National League relegation zone if they win at York, the side immediately above them in the table, this Saturday.

It’s a big incentive but Kutrieb is more worried about final placings than where his team are at Christmas.

“This would be amazing,” he admitted. “It wouldn’t mean anything as we’re still far away from the end of the season.

“It doesn’t mean too much, just because it is Christmas but I can remember two years ago I think we were first in the table at Christmas and then we dropped and dropped.

“Everyone was happy at Christmas but I don’t really care about where we are then, I care about where we are at the end of the season.

“Yes, it’s a massive game that we definitely want to win. It will be a physical battle and exactly the same as Barnet. If we can be ruthless, we definitely have a chance to get three points.

“We need to make sure we get this right, what we did very well last week, and see if we can top it up with more good football and see if we can create more.

“It’s still good enough what we have created, maybe it wasn’t as much as in other games, but the chances we created I think we should have scored them. Every game now will be very tough and very physical.”

Kutrieb is expecting an improvement on the Fleet’s last away game, a 2-0 loss at Kidderminster - and he wants to see the same battling qualities that were on show during the 1-1 draw with promotion-chasing Barnet last weekend.

“Kidderminster was for everyone to see, it was a battle like it was against Barnet but we didn’t battle there as we did last week,” he added.

“If we’d given that battle against Kidderminster it would have been a different story.

“That’s what everyone needs to understand. But everyone thought that we got the win against Oldham so we could do the same against Kidderminster. Yes, we can, if we put the right work in.

“If we think we can [just turn up and] do it, it’s not happening.”

Fleet host Bromley on Boxing Day (3pm).